In 2016, a turning point occurred at Bungie. Many of the minds behind Destiny 1 left the studio, including Ryan Ellis. He was the Design Director for Destiny 1 – The Taken King, the best moment in the history of the shooter. Ellis worked as the head of Concord for the last 6 years. But that is over now since Sony’s shooter catastrophically failed on PS5 and Steam.
This is the story of Destiny: To this day, we do not know exactly why, but in May 2016, there was a break at Bungie. The break is so strange in hindsight because in September 2015, with “Destiny – The Taken King”, the shooter had actually reached its creative peak.
The originally planned version of Destiny 2, which was supposed to revolve around the character Mara Sov and had already been introduced to the fans, was discarded. The responsible game director left Bungie. This was followed by a hasty reboot of the game, which fell far short of fan expectations.
It was announced: Destiny would no longer be a shooter but “a hobby”; the planned paid expansions for 2016 were canceled. By January 2016, Destiny 2 had already been postponed by a year.
In May 2016, Bungie CEO Harold Ryan left the studio, where he had been for 16 years, and founded a new company. In the months and years that followed, several other key employees from Destiny 1 announced their departure from Bungie and joined their boss. He planned to develop several AAA multiplayer titles simultaneously in his new company and sell them to publishers.
Ryan Ellis follows his boss to the new company, worked on Concord
He was one of the most important employees: Ryan Ellis had been working in a leadership position at Bungie since 2009. He was the “Technical Art Director” from 2009 to 2014 and even the Creative Director from September 2014.
In 2015, he worked as Design Director on The Taken King and also appeared publicly on behalf of Bungie, for example, in a video with Wil Wheaton (via youtube).
Ellis left Bungie in June 2016, just a month after Harold Ryan.
He followed his boss in January 2018 and joined as Game Director of the company “Probably Monsters”. He led the development of Concord, the new shooter, at the gaming studio “Firewalk Studio”, which was bought by Sony in 2023.
Ellis is said to have poured all his love into Concord, now steps down as CEO
How has he fared now? After 6 years of work on Concord, it took only a few weeks after a catastrophic release, for Sony to remove the shooter from the market.
Since then, the studio “Firewalk” seems to be stuck in no man’s land. No one knows how things will proceed there. They are waiting for Sony’s decision, as Kotaku reports.
According to a report by Kotaku, Ryan Ellis informed the employees last week that he was stepping down from his position as Game Director and moving to a supportive role.
Kotaku quotes a former developer of Concord that Ryan strongly believed in Concord and thought the game brought players together. He is a great person with a big heart who invested a lot of himself into the game and took on a lot of stress: Why did Concord fail so badly on Steam and PS5 and cost Sony $250 million in a woke catastrophe?
